California labor leaders gathered in Sacramento on Wednesday to outline a vision for how the state can rebuild its crumbling infrastructure and create jobs for the future.

On the eve of today's White House forum on job creation, about 225 representatives of the state's public and private unions - representing a broad swath of industries from schoolteachers to government employees to soon-to-be-laid-off Nummi workers - thrashed out their top legislative and policy concerns.

"Our economy was once the envy of the world, and now it's the butt of punch lines on late-night TV," said Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, which sponsored the economic recovery summit at a downtown hotel. "The only way to rebuild the economy is to invest in jobs."

To accomplish that, union leaders want to ensure that federal stimulus money gets spent on projects that will create broad employment, such as high-speed rail. Other priorities include increasing funding for education and job training; enacting a middle-class bill of rights to define access to such basics as education, public services and health care; shoring up government benefits to assist laid-off workers and others hurt by the economic crisis; and working with California's universities to attract emerging industries and new technologies.

"The link between economic recovery and a broadly shared prosperity is fractured," said Harley Shaiken, a professor of education and geography at UC Berkeley. "We're seeing signs of economic improvement rising at the same time that employment indicators are sinking. That is a recipe for an anemic recovery and a long-term social disaster."

To prevent that, labor says that putting people at the bottom rungs back to work is crucial.

'Equity and fairness'

"We need to pay more attention to equity and fairness in the recovery," said Manuel Pastor, director of the program for environmental and regional equity at the University of Southern California. "Inequity helped produce our financial crisis. We need to make sure our tax dollars and subsidies to business are spent in way to actually benefit (workers)."

California's statistics are sobering. Besides its 12 percent unemployment rate, about 22 percent of people with jobs are underemployed, and there's one job opening for every seven unemployed people, said Maurice Emsellem, policy co-director of the National Employment Law Project.

California ranks 41st in the nation in the value of unemployment benefits compared with average wages. Most immediately on the agenda will be a fight in Congress to reauthorized the unemployment extensions that are due to expire this month, Emsellem said.

Labor is also pushing for the unemployment system to be better connected to job search and training, for instance, providing in-person help with unemployment benefits at One-Stop centers for job hunters.

Green jobs

The green economy was clearly a top priority.

"We have to attach 'green strings' to economic development money, tax break money and recovery money," said Greg LeRoy, executive director and founder of Good Jobs First. "Why should we subsidize any construction that's not very green?"

Similarly, "smart growth strings" are needed to bolster projects that are high-density and transit-oriented, he said.

The agency could start by installing solar roofs on all new schools and government buildings, and retrofitting existing ones, he said.

Investing in job growth will cost money - and speakers weren't afraid to say that is likely to mean increased taxes.

Investing in future

"Over the long term we need to raise the revenue to invest in the future," said Nathan Newman, executive director of the Progressive States Network, which advocates legislation to spur economic growth. "It's a myth that taxes shut down growth. In 2002 to 2004, the states that increased taxes had growth higher than the states that didn't."

One of labor's biggest defeats - or, as Pulaski termed it, "betrayal" - will come April 1 when Fremont's Nummi car manufacturing plant, a joint venture of Toyota and General Motors, will be shut down, wiping out jobs for about 4,000 union workers as well as hurting about 50,000 subcontractors and suppliers.

Union leaders are circulating a petition urging Toyota to keep the plant open - and also have a message for General Motors, which pulled out of the joint venture earlier this year as part of its Chapter 11 reorganization.

"GM wants to bring in the Chevy Volt (an extended-range electric vehicle backed by stimulus money) and market it here in California," said Javier Contreras, chairman of Local 2244 of the United Auto Workers, which represents Nummi workers.

"We need to send a strong message to them: If you want to sell it here, you also need to build it here," he added to thunderous applause.